1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system and method for providing control gain of a vehicle and, more particularly, to system and method for providing running characteristics of a vehicle which match the preferred drive feel and living environment of a driver by sharing environment data and learned data with a plurality of other drivers.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, control gains of vehicle running characteristics are provided so as to satisfy the driver's intention wherever the vehicle runs, whatever the circumstances are and whatever the driver's personality is.
It has been known to provide a vehicle with a manual switch for selecting a hard mode or a soft mode of an active suspension system and for a sporty mode or a normal mode of a four-wheel steering system by setting a specific control gain. This enables the vehicle running characteristic to match the driver's taste.
However, the conventional vehicle with such a manual switch cannot adequately satisfy the desires of all drivers. In view of this, a learning controlled vehicle has been proposed that uses learned driving characteristics of a driver for feedback control and changing the control gains of the vehicle running characteristics.
Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. 5-155276 discloses a learning controlled vehicle in which driving operations of a driver and the environment of the vehicle are learned and a control gain of a running characteristic of the vehicle is changed to match the preferred drive feel of the driver so that the driver is much more satisfied with the running characteristic of the vehicle.
However, since the conventional learning vehicle is such that driving operations of the driver and the circumstances of the vehicle are learned and the control gain of the running characteristics of the vehicle are changed based on the driving operation data and running characteristic data so as to obtain driving characteristics preferred by the driver, the vehicle needs to be provided with a large capacity storage device for storing all of the driving operation data and running characteristic data.
Further, since the conventional learning vehicle uses only its own learned data and the running characteristic data, learning sufficient for obtaining the most favorable control gain cannot be achieved.
Moreover, since the vehicle cannot obtain environment data of an area where the vehicle has never before run, the vehicle cannot obtain favorable control gain in such an area.
If a data learning vehicle could share and use learned data and environment data of other vehicles as its own data, the vehicle would be able to provide better control gains and obtain more favorable running characteristics. However, the inability of learning controlled vehicles to achieve such functions has not yet been perceived by those skilled in the art. Thus nothing specific has yet been proposed to solve such problems.